With the not-so-recent rise of social media and online marketing, small businesses now have more opportunities to promote their products and services and reach their target audience. Most of the strategies used in these platforms are related to inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing is one of the best ways to get people interested in your business. It's about providing value to them by giving them content they like and love, not selling directly to them. This definition also helps us separate inbound from outbound marketing. While inbound marketing is based on valuable content that creates a connection, outbound marketing interrupts your target audience with content they do not always want.
Some of the most common ways of inbound marketing are SEO, SEM, email marketing, and social media. These tools are combined with other marketing techniques and place the consumer at the center of it all. It makes a consumer feel valued and offers solutions to any of their needs. In this article, you will learn the methodology of inbound marketing and some of the benefits it provides.
Inbound Marketing Methodology
The inbound marketing methodology divides itself into three steps. Attract, engage, and delight. These steps are related to marketing funnel stages, and some experts in the field claim there is one more step, which is nurture. The most vital part of inbound marketing is creating loyalty in the consumer. Below, you will find a description of each step.
Attract
The first step of this marketing methodology is attracting. It is based on positioning your brand across the web and generating brand awareness to attract potential clients. These prospects will find your content and, through it, will discover your products.
For this first step to work, you need to create a content plan that will increase your web page traffic. This content includes social media posts, blog articles, and advertisements in search engines. You also need to create a buyer persona. A buyer persona is an ideal candidate to consume your products or services. For example, if you sell sportswear, your buyer persona will be young, interested in sports, and have a healthy life overall.
Creating a buyer persona is not something you do in an hour. You must study your products and branding, and from there, you can decide which type of consumer would be interested in your company. You must look at the purpose of your company and how it relates to people's needs. Here are some more examples of content for the attract stage:
Ads
Video content
Blog articles
Social Media posts
Infographics
Company values
Success stories
Engage
Now that you have attracted customers to your website, it is time to engage with them. This step is based on the last statement of the stage before, how your company relates to people's needs. After your company has created a trust bond between supplier and consumer, you will present your products to a customer. You are solving any doubts that come along the way. You must offer a solution to the consumer's needs. Lucky for you, your company can solve the needs of an attracted person.
Engaging with a potential customer can be achieved through various means and tools specifically designed to achieve it. Lead flows, chatbots, and CTAs are some of the most common examples you will find in the second step of this methodology.
These tools will help consumers get in contact with your company and resolve any doubts about your business. They will fill out a form with their information and become a contact in your database. These are called leads when a prospect consumer provides information to a company and requests something back.
Delight
Now that you have all the relevant information regarding a potential customer, you need to make the sale. In this stage, most companies align their marketing and sales team to maximize the methodology's results. To delight a customer, you need to provide a great experience. The better the experience with your company, the more attracted a customer will be to buy your product not just once but many times in the future.
Part of a company's success is based on how many clients recommend your brand. By providing a meaningful experience, consumers will have no problem doing so, making the methodology go full circle. Once again, you will have to attract these potential customers, engage them and delight them.
Investing in an efficient site is crucial. Having a good SEO ranking and eliminating any nuisances in your website will help clients choose your products. Using a CRM is also considered a best practice. Having a database of potential and loyal customers is a must in this day and age.
Nurture
The additional stage to inbound marketing is called nurture. And it is pretty simple, maintain contact with the customer after they purchase your products. As we mentioned before, creating loyalty in your customers is essential to a company's survival. Now that your company needs to fulfill your client's expectancies, you need to make sure your customers "remember" your brand.
The best way to nurture your clients is with newsletters. Email marketing campaigns are a great strategy that helps your company keep consumers engaged. You can offer coupons, sneak peeks at new products, or any other form of valuable content you have been doing up to this point. You must work to make your customer ambassadors of your brand and therefore add value to your business.
Inbound Marketing
The inbound marketing methodology is a virtuous circle in which clients of your brand will help promote your company. It will also fortify your business's internet presence, position your company in the consumer's mind, create lasting bonds maximizing each client's purchase life, and generate more leads and sales opportunities.
Inbound marketing also lowers your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) without affecting the budget. As the wheel of inbound marketing starts spinning, your loyal customers will attract more at little to no extra cost while you implement the same budget to your next quarter to attract even more customers.
The result is a robust digital strategy that your company can use without worrying about publicity or investment. Inbound Marketing has a base on brand reputation, content plans, and analytics. Moreover, it provides security to you, your business, and your customers.